Pedagogy of Project Based Learning Essay Example

while in a collaborative team? Did high school ever present information in effective ways so that complicated and convoluted ideas can be communicated easily to others? My answer to all of the questions posed is a boisterous "no".

In today's traditional classrooms, students typically work on simple assignments that emphasize short-term content memorization. They often work alone, write for the teacher alone, and rarely have the opportunity to solve problems that are relevant to themselves as individuals. They are trained to serve this one-to-one relationship with the teacher, which in my opinion is hardly representative of the demands and challenges that they will have to face in real life. I am a typical product of the Canadian educational system.

I read Shakespeare and wrote prose and sonnets. Read also about the role of cognition in learningI wrote an essay on “Of Mice and Men”. I even sat through my grade eleven math class...

twice, and in doing so probably learned one of the most important lessons of my life to date. That that style of learning is not really learning at all. It is more like a training exercise. The teacher would hold up the hoop and the class would jump through it.

Never knowing why, but simply knowing that it was required of us, and that if we did we could get a pat on the head and a passing grade. Shop class was different. It was in complete reverse to any preconceived notions of what a class room should be.In that class I came alive.

I never once had to jump through the teachers’ hoop.

I was forever jumping through my own hoop. I was solving problems that pertained to me and my world. I had opportunities to learn from my mistakes without the mistake being a bad thing.

It was the first time in my life where I got to learn from my peers and not solely the instructor. There wasn’t right or wrong, only problem and solution. I could not get enough. In fact, out of high school I became a Cabinetmaker’s Apprentice. The feeling I got working with my hands in that class moulded me and my career choice.I have, since high school, had many problems to solve on my workbench and I have learned something from them all.

I am forever grateful for Project Based Learning. For it is the love of being “hands on” that has yet again moulded my choice of career. I want one of my future students to one day be writing an essay about my class, and how it has impacted their life for the better. I know firsthand that by employing Project Based Learning, students are guided to work on longer term challenges that involve real life problems. This helps students see the complex aspect of any job or activity in a more realistic fashion.

This in turn will better prepare the student for the real challenges that will inevitably lie ahead. Project Based Learning allows students the opportunity to go through an educational experience which allows them to transcend the limiting nature of the one-to-one teacher-student relationship. Instead they learn by doing. They learn through self satisfaction. They learn how to collaborate and arrive at results efficiently while working with

others.

At the same time the teacher himself is transformed into a facilitator, a guide, a mentor, and with any luck a wonderful memory for the students that will have walked through my shop.